An extremist, not a fanatic

August 24, 2009

Religion is good for you

Religion is good for your health. That’s the finding of this new paper (pdf) by Angus Deaton. He says:

On average, over all countries, and over countries sorted into income groups, religious people do better on a number of health and health-related indicators. These protective effects appear to be stronger the poorer is the country.

Using Gallup’s world poll, of over 350,000 people in 144 countries, he estimates that - controlling for things such as age and education - religious men are 1.7 percentage points less likely to have experienced physical pain the previous day; 4.2 percentage points more likely to say they feel energetic, and 3.2 percentage points more likely to say they are satisfied with their health.Deaton’s paper, though, is by no means the only one to have found a positive correlation between religion and health. This paper (pdf) says:

In healthy participants, there is a strong, consistent, prospective, and often graded reduction in risk of mortality in church/service attenders.

And Mike McCullough of the University of Miami has gathered other evidence.This is unlikely to be because God looks after his own. Instead, it’s because being religious is associated with things that are good for you. For example, in Deaton’s sample, religious men are less likely to smoke, more likely to feel they are respected by others, and more likely to be married - and these things are good for one’s health. Because these correlations are weaker for women, he found no evidence that religion improves women’s health - although the other research does find this. It’s also the case that religious people are more likely to be extraverted and agreeable than others, and more likely to be generally happier (pdf). These things also help (pdf) us live longer. Belief in God doesn't give us eternal life in the next world, but does seem to offer a longer life in this one. Contrary to the impression given by Richard Dawkins, religion does seem to have some beneficial effects.

Comments

I wonder if they phoned any atheists? I can't understand how religious people could be healthy or happy since they are always under the threat of hell and damnation. We all know that most illnesses are caused by continuous stress. Being brought up by overly zealous
religious parents and continued harassment by
priest and pastors would certainly cause a problem for me. But that's just me of course.

In "The God Delusion" Dawkins discusses the beneficial effect of being religious and agrees it does exist. However he points out that just because believing in somthong is beneficial does not mean that belief is correct.

Not being spurious but I also saw a paper on the good health of eccentrics and people committed to a cause. Naturally, as a Christian, I claim a spiritual element to it as well but just the health benefits alone show it to be preferable to deep cynicism and pessimism.

@ Gaddeswarup: Try some of Matthew O. Hunt's papers, such as this: http://nuweb.neu.edu/mhunt/articles/SSQ%2002.pdf.
@ Marksany. Of course, a beneficial belief can be wrong. The interesting thing is: how strong is the correlation between truth and utility, across all beliefs? I suspect it might be low.

A yes, but I remember there was a paradox here - being individually religious was good for you, but being in a religious society was bad for you. The simplest theoretical explaination is negative externalities (not hard to explain since almost all religion is at its heart about exclusion).

But I must say I was concerned by this:
"controlling for things such as age and education "
- I thought being educated was negatively correlated with belief and positively with health - so isn't controlling for it potentially biasing the results?